Recently, a rapid advancement in shortening of access time to an image has been made through progress in electronics, leading to further demand for more rapid processing of a silver halide element.
Technique have been known for promoting photographic-processing speed such as a developing rate, fixing rate, washing rate or drying rate by reducing the amount of gelatin used as a binder for dispersing and protecting silver halide grains to provide rapid-processability.
With reduction of the amount of gelatin used, highly sensitive silver halide grains become increasingly less able to resist external pressure, so that, when processed in an automatic processor, numerous small spot-like uneven density, so-called roller marks, produced by pressure due to unevenness of the transporting rollers operating in the developing bath of the automatic processor. Especially when processed within a total processing time of 30 seconds, the roller mark problem becomes pronounced.
Recently, furthermore, environmental pollution has been viewed as a world-wide problem, causing a rise in interest in waste-material at home and abroad to the point that responsibility for reduction in waste-material at the corporate level has been called for.
Under these conditions, reduction of photographic processing effluent becomes an urgent problem to be solved. In order to achieve such reductions, there were disclosed techniques of making tabular silver halide grains or applying selenium-sensitization to silver halide grains, as shown, for example, in JP-A 4-291252/1992 (the term "JP-A" herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). However, the level of reduction in the replenishing rate is still insufficient and it was found that further reduction lowered the level to pressure resistance.